Dear everyone,
I have had a lot of travelling over the last month - -
several weeks ago San Diego, last weekend to Worcester MA, and next week to
France and Switzerland, where we expect to see Jacob (now screw less), and
Hannah.
I was in Worcester for an aikido instructor’s seminar. This has been held in Chicago in the past,
but this year was the 25th anniversary of the dojo and Zen center
there (http://www.zenshinkan.com/). Before the aikido seminar there was a week-long
training event with Zen and aikido study going on all the time (the
participants even sleep in the dojo).
Not for me. The head instructors
were Ed Germanov, a Bulgarian who is the nominal head of our organization (we
get our Japanese black belt certification through him - - martial arts politics
are weird), and Michele Quaranta, a Swiss 6th degree who trained
with Masatomi Ikeda. I left for the
seminar last Thursday with Bob Garza (my dojo head) and Joan Dehnert (the dojo
office manager) for Providence RI, where we rented a car and drove one hour to
Worcester. We got to our hotel, dumped
the luggage in the room and went downstairs to eat at a Chicago Uno off the
main lobby. We tried the Mexican
restaurant across the street first, but that was a 20 minute wait. We didn’t get to see much of Worcester, but
our hotel was just across the street from the civic auditorium (which hosts an
AHL hockey team), a block from the main hospital, and not far from a rail line –
ambulances and train whistle would plague our sleeping hours, as well as the
snores of our companions.
Friday morning we ate in the hotel. The seminar didn’t start until that
afternoon, so we drove one hour up to Boston.
We weren’t really sure where we were going (and Bob’s i-phone app did
not help a whole lot). Somehow we ended
up in Charlestown in front of Bunker Hill.
The Bunker Hill monument
Boston Harbor from the ship deck. If you squint you can make out the Old North Tower of Paul Revere fame
A returning lunch cruise
A view of the ship
The ship's mast. Wouldn't want to climb that in a storm.
I should have taken more pictures. 400-500 men served aboard
the ship at any given time. The living quarters
for the enlisted men were practically non-existent.
All you had was a hammock in the front of the ship, which you had to ‘hot-bunk’
(time share) with two or three other sailors. There was no privacy, primitive (non-existent) sanitation, bad food. The decks were only about 5&1/2 feet high! The officers had pitiful little cabinets for privacy, whereas the captain
had almost a tenth of a deck to himself. The food was ship’s biscuit – flour and
water that was baked until hard - - not even the rats would eat it (the nearby
museum had a biscuit from the 1800’s, which was still in 'good condition), stew,
coffee and grog. Between the biscuit and
scurvy it’s not surprising that so many sailors were toothless. The ship is still commissioned, and still
goes out into the ocean several times a year.
After the ship we passed the dry dock
A funny sign at the shipyard.
and a more modern battleship (open for tours on the weekend),
we went to the nearby museum. The museum had some incredible displays of model
ships (some at such a large scale that they took years to complete).
One of the dozens of model ships
Upstairs was a great area for 8-12 year olds about life as a sailor in the revolutionary era.
It was pretty hard, and I suspect that most of the sailors did it
because there was no other work available, or too many siblings at home,
etc. The conditions were pretty vile.
We had a late lunch and drove along the Charles to the
highway.
A view of the Zakim - Bunker Hill bridge from the car. Look back and see how the pylons of the bridge look like the monument!
The way back to Worcester took
almost two hours, with a lot of inexplicable slowdowns along the tollway. Actually, some were pretty explicable - - the
Mass turnpike does not have open road tolling like we do now, so every twenty
or so miles there were incredible stoppages to go through a limited number of toll
booths, even with EZ pass available.
The seminar lasted from Friday night through Sunday
noon. Hard to describe for the rest of
you. I have been in seminars with Germanov
before, so I was familiar with a lot of the things he was teaching, but
Quaranta was very new to me. I liked him
a lot. He is originally Italian; I don’t
know how long he has lived in Switzerland (Basel). He used to be a professional soccer
player. He speaks (at least) Italian,
German, French, English, and Japanese.
He is a very humble guy, and he enjoys throwing people around a
lot. I hope Bob will be able to retain
some of the techniques he learned and integrate them into our classes.
Things of note: On Friday,
Bob was thrown into a wall, and his foot caught the edge of a forced air
vent. He took a gouge out of his heel,
and had to wrap his foot up for the rest of the seminar. Friday night we all went out to eat at a
local fish restaurant, the Sole Proprietor (http://www.thesole.com/). I had some Irish smoked salmon (good) and
some unagi (too much rice). Saturday for
lunch I went with two aikidoka from Connecticut. David is a male wall paper hanger about my age
(who does a lot of jobs in the Greenwich area).
Business is back up, but he never lacked for work during the recession. He had been backed up about 6 months during
the high times, which dropped to 2-4 weeks at the worst period. The other, Annie, is a sophomore in high school. Her father works in the Foreign Service, and
she had lived in Morocco, Bulgaria, Switzerland, etc. She is taking French in High School, of all
languages. Saturday we were a bit late getting started for the second session,
because Germanov took part in a Zen ceremony where he was ratified as a Zen
priest. Saturday night there was a party at the dojo, with an Italian buffet. It was bring your own beverage - - not surprisingly,
a lot of people bought a six pack of something or other, so there was a lot of
beer. I regretted it the next day. I can recommend golden monkey (http://www.victorybeer.com/beers/golden-monkey/)
if you are looking for something with high alcohol content.
Our flight back to Chicago was fine, except for complete
disorder on the part of baggage handlers at Midway. It took over an hour for us to get ¾ of our
bags (apparently about half of the plane’s baggage was left sitting on the
tarmac somewhere unloaded), and we never got the travel tube (an oversize bag) with
our weapons in it. We finally left, and
they arrived at Bob’s house about two hours later. I’m glad they showed up, since I had brought
my best sword (Cindy’s 5th anniversary present to me) along on the
trip. Next time remember to only travel with
the objects you can afford to lose! I
got a $75 voucher from Southwest as a placatory gesture.
At work we have been going on enforced tours of the new
outpatient center, due to open when we are out of the country. Surgical pathology will have a presence next
to the outpatient ORs. We at least have
our own entrance (so we don’t have to wear scrubs like Loyola), and a break
room. Only use will tell us if the
layout is any good. Simultaneous with
this is testing the new versions of both the pathology information and the
voice recognition systems. I have been a
beta tester for them, and there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of
significant improvement. This was great
way for the administration to move costs out of their pockets (paying for
transcriptionists) and into those of the pathologists.
Last and most importantly, is that Cindy has been diagnosed
with kidney stones. She had a spell of
renal colic about six weeks ago, and another one while I was in Mass. I insisted that she see a doctor, and a CT revealed
stones on both sides. She has some
medications now, and she is getting ureteral stents put in on Monday in
anticipation of our foreign travel. More
definitive work will be done on our return.
Love, H.
1 comment:
Poor Cindy! I hope these stones will not be as painful for her as ours were for us.
Jacob and I toured the Constitution after Isaac's wedding. Fun!
Owen
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